Was Benjamin Cardozo Hispanic?

Progressives have a double-standard on race, science, and public policy.

During an international trade conference in Seattle that I attended a few years ago I met a Chinese journalist who, after learning that I was Jewish, remarked that “Jews are very smart. Kissinger. Rockefellers. Good with numbers. Make a lot of money.”

I wanted to respond that he had just met a Jewish guy who was not good with numbers. But then I figured that he was trying to give me a compliment. So I didn’t even correct him about confusing the Rockefellers with the Rothschilds. (Or since the Rockefellers were Kissinger’s patrons, he probably assumed that they were also Jewish).

I would have said something if the Chinese journalist had employed an ugly stereotype of Jews. Indeed, as Andy Rooney used to day,“did you ever notice” that we celebrate the nice things said about a national, ethnic, racial, or gender group, like that women are more cooperative than men, that black men can dance, that Italians have a ear for music. But then we condemn as bigotry anyone who uses any broad-brush negative generalizations about these groups.

That is the way civilized people should behave. When our friends introduce us to their newborn with an “Isn’t he cute?” we won’t respond with a “That is some ugly baby.” And my guess is that no one would accuse us of succumbing to the pressure of political correctness.

Indeed, it is not polite and may be considered brutally abusive to single out for ridicule an individual who fails to measure up to our standards of beauty and intelligence, while it’s considered quite appropriate to congratulate those who score high on these individual characteristics—for example, “You really lost weight,” as opposed to “You really look fat.”

So I believe it’s quite fitting to play by the same rules when referring to the many collective identities in our midst not because it’s politically correct but because it’s the civilized thing to do, especially if you live in a society comprised of many racial, ethnic and religious groups.

This brings me to the recent debate over Jason Richwine’s doctoral dissertation in which he explained that Hispanics are documented to have lower IQs than whites. Forget not being polite: Richwine was accused of being a racist. And even if we assume that Richwine was operating on solid scientific grounds (which he probably was since he received his doctorate from Harvard University and not from the University of Phoenix), should we not accuse Richwine of needlessly stigmatizing an ethnic community, which is not the right thing to do in a civilized society like ours?

But then I don’t hear a lot of accusations of racism after scientists issue a study that demonstrates that members certain ethnic and racial groups are susceptible to certain diseases, like Ashkenazi Jewish women who are at high risk of getting breast cancer. Those kinds of scientific advances that do single out certain groups and that suggest that they are not like the rest of us, health-wise, are regarded in fact as a good thing. After all, we would thank our physician for warning us that we are overweight (fat) and would not compare him to the boorish punk who yelled “fatso” at us.

While there has always been a debate about whether social science, including economics, should be considered akin to a “hard” science like physics, the fact is that studies in sociology and anthropology, preferably conducted by academics in Ivy League institutions, have provided the scientific basis for public policies that singled out specific racial groups for special treatments like affirmative action.

Hence, policy makers have operated under the assumption that social scientists not only have the right to conduct research (in accordance with accepted scientific rules of conduct) that measures the social and economic performance of certain ethnic and racial groups, but that we should encourage this kind of research and take it seriously when proposing policies to deal with social-economic problems. So I found it somewhat hypocritical that Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve and similar scientific research that aimed to prove that human intelligence, including racial differences in intelligence, may be a better predictor of one’s social and economic status than one’s environment were castigated as “racist.”

That doesn’t mean, of course, that if some Harvard Ph.D. student proves that short men earn less and get fewer dates than tall men, we should attach any significance from a scientific or policy perspective to these findings—which is why when anyone comes up with results from that kind of “research,” it gets the attention it deserves from the monologues of late-night television comedians. And we would certainly be surprised to learn that this was a subject approved for a doctoral dissertation at Harvard. But then, no one has proposed public programs to assist vertically challenged men.

Hispanics, however, constitute the majority of the 11 million or so illegal immigrants, whose absorption into American society would be a huge plus according to advocates of a liberalized approach to immigration. They are therefore central to the debate over a major policy issue. This suggests that we should welcome any scientific study that examines the economic and social-cultural background of members of this group, including their IQ. (Although it should be noted that IQ in itself should not be the most critical thing determining our position on immigration reform and that these findings certainly don’t help to decide what we should do about the current population of illegal immigrants.)

I do, however, have a problem with the use of the term “Hispanics,” as it could include immigrants from, say, Spain and Argentina (which is a home to immigrants from Italy, Ireland, and Germany) or for that matter Sepharadic Jews like Judah Benjamin, the secretary of state of the Confederacy, and Benjamin Cardozo, who probably should be considered to be the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice.

In fact, since on my mother’s side I belong to a Jewish family that had been expelled from Spain in 1492, I discovered when applying for a job in academia awhile ago that for the purposes of affirmative action programs, I was considered to be, well, Hispanic. So based on Richwine’s findings I could have a very high IQ (as a Jew) or a low one (as an Hispanic), not to mention the fact that being born in West Asia (Israel) may qualify me as an Asian-American.

Or consider the complex ethnic/racial/religious profile of former Republican Senator from Virginia George Allen whose mom, like Barack Obama’s dad, was born in Africa. And, hey, she is also a Sepharadic Jew, which means that if he ever ran for president, Allen could end up being the second African-American and the first Jew and Hispanic to occupy the White House.

This of course sounds and is silly. But you could make the same argument about the entire multicultural agenda and the race/ethnic/gender-based affirmative-action programs that have been promoted by America’s political left and that insist on pursing public policies based on our alleged membership in this or that collective community (which would require academic institutions to give preference in their employment policies to an “Hispanic” like myself). The same people then stigmatize as bigots and racists those on the political right who apply such categories in doing research and discussing public policy.

The preferred (classical) liberal approach to public policy, including to immigration, would be to dismiss such divisions into ethnic and racial groups like Latinos and African-Americans and be blind to the ethnic, racial, and religious origins of individuals who want to become Americans.

What we should do is encourage talented, successful, hard-working and, yes, intelligent people to come to this country irrespective of color, creed or national origin and take part and compete in what is a marketplace of ideas—including the freedom to conduct scientific research on race and IQ.

And since such research demonstrates that immigrants from China and India have a higher IQ than whites, we might find that a merit-based immigration policy would actually end up changing the racial makeup of America by reducing the percentage of whites in the country and hasten the coming of the day when a white family moves next door and their Asian-American neighbors complain, “There goes the neighborhood.”

MORE IN POLITICS

Hide 27 comments

27 Responses to Was Benjamin Cardozo Hispanic?

Your argument seems to be that, because ethnic identity can be complicated for some people like yourself, it should always be ignored as a matter of public policy. This would seem like a very attractive idea for people like me, whose ancestors began with a leg up in American society the minute they got off the boat from Europe (with no papers) due to their pale, pale skin. And, of course, it is a less attractive idea for people like my African-American neighbor, who earlier this year was instantly assumed by police to be the perpetrator of a crime he was, in fact, the victim of (in no way an isolated incident in our society).

So is this a matter of race-baiting progressives vs. impartial conservatives, or of people promoting policies that they think advance their communities – those who feel secure proposing inaction while those who feel oppressed, action? I suspect the latter.

Also, it seems to me that “needlessly stigmatizing an ethnic community” is an action that can fairly be described as racist. In fact, isn’t it the very essence of racism?

” . . .(which he probably was since he received his doctorate from Harvard University and not from the University of Phoenix)”

If I may, the rules and principles of scientific inquirey are the same whether one obtained their degree at harvard or the University of Pheonix. And questioning the validity of such research has been to long included the prestige now debunked by the number of highly intelligent people from prestiges ‘accoloduis’ institutions eagerly marched us into the fields of Iraq and other assorted debacles.

“What we should do is encourage talented, successful, hard-working and, yes, intelligent people to come to this country irrespective of color, creed or national origin and take part and compete in what is a marketplace of ideas—including the freedom to conduct scientific research on race and IQ.:

How about we do this. Place a moratorium on all immigration until we figure just how and why thing have gone so dramatically wrong with our own citizenry? That’s a novel idea. In the United States we treat immigration as though it’s US novelty. That immigration policy only exists here in the US. When anyone who has traveled beyond these borders knows full well, most other countries have a far stricter policy than we have here. I have not a single reason to allow a single immigrant into the country that provides anything that we couldn’t foster ourselves. What are the pool of Ph’ds in the UNited States so incredibly incapable of producing break through science that we must import them? What’s the analysis for that? What science says these intelligent immigrants are more intelligent than US intelligent citizens?

And l’est we go down that road — I am not advocating the termination of academic international conferences or exchange programs.

And since the focus is supposedly on science, I think thetre’s sevrral other matters of fact that cease being taken for granted.

To any serious scientist knows that race is a social concept. Genetically, there is very little variation between groups of humans. What we are looking at here are disparities in IQ between socioeconomic groups, Hispanic immigrants are coming from impoverished communities, while Asian & Indian immigrants come primarily from the professional classes of their respective societies.

Re: “Richwine was operating on solid scientific grounds (which he probably was since he received his doctorate from Harvard University)”

Receiving a doctorate from Harvard means less than <emNothing. In general, it is a net negative.

American Power Elites use academic pedigrees as proxies for genuine wisdom and insight. That pathological bias has allowed arrogant Harvard Elites to parachute repeatedly into Washington and Wall Street where they have wrecked and continue to wreck businesses, economies, social structures, even other countries. (Obama is the latest Harvard Nitwit running hyper-stupid in the Oval Office.)

All of that is driven by the hubris and conceit inculcated by an Ivy League pedigree. The best thing that can happen for Americans in general is to be left alone by the intellectual smarmary emanating from Cambridge, New Haven and Princeton.

First, race is not about skin color. It’s based on the DNA structure of any given biological grouping, i.e. the human race, the canine race, the dolphin race . . . etc. It does not denote skin color. So skin color as a trait for IQ is absolutely an incorrect marker. Skin colors’ impact is purely a sociological determinent — so using it as a biological marker to intelligence is more than misleading.

Second, The appropriate biological marker is the biological structure of one’s nuerological system, including the brain. The structure, the chemical make up and chemical content, are all factors that are relevant to understanding intelligence. But no neurologist is going point to skin color as a primary factor in addressing nueroscience, at least one hopes not.

Third, ethnicity is a very appropriate construct to examine because ethnicity is a cultural trait that examines those attributes of how one in incorporated into a particular group which includes: learning and training in languages, the rules, the traditions the expectations of that groups social structure, family, etc.

Fourth and perhaps most importantly, IQ is a sociological construct to measure specific identifiers. Almost all of which require some level of exposure to them. And accept for the rare geniuses who seem to truly born with some extraordinary ability to comprehend that which they have little or no exposure to.

Obviously I have completed my garage epoxy but have yet to tackle my living room decl — too much time on my hands —

I feel like the posters above have already made the point, but no “Richwine was operating on solid scientific grounds (which he probably was since he received his doctorate from Harvard University)” is 100% not a true statement. It’s not even remotely connected to science or the scientific method, which does not give a damn about the “prestige” of the institution you went too.

One of the early lessons I had while studying at Edinburgh Uni (BSc Biological Sciences (Genetics) since you ask) was being given a Nature paper by our lecturers to study and present. They proceeded to shred it as complete drivel. But it had been published in Nature, prestigious international journal, etcetc. Moral of story= real science doesn’t take things on reputation.

The fact that Richwine was equating race (which is a dubious enough concept if you’re going to truly going to look at things on an actual genetic level) with “Hispanic” tells you he was practising pseudo-science to put it most kindly.

Hispanic is a cultural term. I has nothing to do whatsoever with race. That is a WASP invention of gross magnitude. Hispanic (or Hispano) derives from the word Hispania, or known today as Espana — its English translation being Spain). Hispano is a person from Hispania. Hence, in our post “Independence” phase, a Hispanic is an individual, independent of race, who adopted Hispanic culture (i.e, the culture of Spain — or the culture of what Spain left behind outside Europe, 90% in America) as his identity, and the Hispanic language (i.e., the language of Spain — or the variants of Spain’s language outside Europe).

A person whose ancestors were Hispanic upon coming to America, and was born in the USA and raised in the USA is for all practical purposes no longer Hispanic. English is his Mother tongue. US values forms him. Anglo Saxon culture (the USA variant of it) is his reality. The USA is their nationality. As an individual, his Hispanic past lives on, and aquires “multicultural” perspectives — but it is not dominant nor sets the tone. It can affect him, but doesn’t define him.

The Ancient Spaniards would have called them Mestizos — inhabitants who adopted Castilian as his mother tongue, Castillian/Catholic values formed them, and Castillian culture is their reality. Spain was their nationality. They were Spaniards period, but Spaniards who brought with them (and others inherited) their pre-Castilian past. Hence, the word Mestizo — Spanirds of mixed culture — or in out modern terminology, Multicultural Spaniards.

Only WASPS make it a racial term. Mestizo or “half-breed” was reduced to a racial degraded person unworthy of the superior WASP. USA census places it as a racial type. What ignorance !

It must be corrected.

PS. I am an American citizen who has lived in Spanish America for 15 years, and married to an authentic Hispanic american.

Leon, it strikes me that positive stereotypes are only appreciated when said or written of groups considered to be oppressed. For instance, “women are more cooperative than men” may be celebrated, because of long historical discrimination against the female gender. But woe to one who says a similarly nice thing about men vis-a-vis women! (Think of Larry Summers in this regard – and he was just suggesting a possibility.) Similarly, you may say that blacks are good dancers, or have good rhythm, but saying something like that of whites, even if it doesn’t have much to do with vocational or academic success, would be likely considered as racist. I’m not sure I’ve heard it said that Italians have an ear for music, so I’ll leave that one alone. They’re a somewhat perplexing case in any event, as swarthy people who did suffer from discrimination in this country, but are nonetheless white Europeans.

Doc Solomon says: “To any serious scientist knows that race is a social concept. Genetically, there is very little variation between groups of humans. What we are looking at here are disparities in IQ between socioeconomic groups . . .” —-

1. Please learn a few things about statistical sampling.
2. If it’s good enough for government and sociological work then it’s good enough psychometric work. Most hispanics come from just one country(Mexico) and the rest come from countries with similar psychometric profiles as Mexico.

Yes labels like “hispanic” should be taken somewhat ironically, but there’s no reason to just throw up your hands and put your fingers in your ears screaming “la la la la Cameron Diaz”.

Forget Race-IQ… how much does biology inform sociologists? Not much from what I can see… and I think this is dangerous.

“And since such research demonstrates that immigrants from China and India have a higher IQ than whites, we might find that a merit-based immigration policy would actually end up changing the racial makeup of America by reducing the percentage of whites in the country and hasten the coming of the day when a white family moves next door and their Asian-American neighbors complain, ‘There goes the neighborhood.’”

Why should we have immigration that is so great that it noticeably changes the racial makeup of America? We are a mature country with no land left to settle. Why should large-scale immigration of any people continue?

JCM, I seriously doubt your assertions. For instance, half my ancestry is in the largest national grouping in the US – but that’s not WASP, it’s German. (German, btw, was in contention for becoming the national language of the US, losing to English by a mere one vote.) Irish is the second highest, but they’re predominantly Celtic, not Anglo-Saxon. There are also large numbers of Poles, Italians, African-Americans (from a number of different countries, granted), French, etc, with no real connection to England, the home of Anglo-Saxon culture. And even the English are still largely Celtic by ancestry. So your belief that we’re Anglo-Saxon by culture is questionable, at best. Jacques Barzun said that our popular culture was predominantly
German, our high culture mainly French.

As to your statement that WASP’s made “mestizo” a racial classification – where do you get these ideas? The Spanish conquerors of Latin America made it a racial term, for use in their caste system (“casta”), and yes, it did mean of mixed American Indian and European descent. (If the ancient Spaniards used it in a different context, that just demonstrates how language changes over time.) After all, the word meant nothing in English before contact with Latin American culture. Neither, I believe, did words like “pardo”, “mulatto”, “quadroon”, “octoroon”, etc. Those were all words used by the Spanish colonial administrators for their racially-based casta.

You may be right about “Hispanic”, but I’ve never heard a Latin American organization in the US object to it. I’m skeptical of name changes for ethnicities in general. For instance, the NAACP was founded largely by people then called Negroes. But this sounded disturbingly close to its corruption, so black and sometimes Afro-American took its place. Jesse Jackson seems to have spearheaded an effort to change the latter to African-American, even tho there are North Africans in this country who don’t look like those with whom we associate the term. And now, “people of color” is often used as well, but “colored people” is disfavored. I’m strongly inclined to think that much of it is a play for attention.

“Jesse Jackson seems to have spearheaded an effort to change the latter to African-American, even tho there are North Africans in this country who don’t look like those with whom we associate the term. And now, “people of color” is often used as well, but “colored people” is disfavored. I’m strongly inclined to think that much of it is a play for attention.”

Good grief,

it was used in refernce to its power of symbology. To give blacks a sence of connection from the land from which they came. To put a people to a place and therefore more standing. More attention . . . I guess in the mind of some, but it was none other than what is stated above. George Hervert Jesse Jackson seems to have spearheaded an effort to change the latter to African-American, even tho there are North Africans in this country who don’t look like those with whom we associate the term. And now, “people of color” is often used as well, but “colored people” is disfavored. I’m strongly inclined to think that much of it is a play for attention.eade’s Symboloic Interaction — identity discovery and or making.
The only aside from native americans for who no names fill the logs of Ellis Island or San Francisco immigration ports.

@ErikofMpls: that your African-American neighbor was wrongfully assumed to have perpetrated a misdeed of which he was innocent is highly unfortunate. The simple truth, however, is that the reputations of black Americans precede them. Decent blacks cannot control this, but they can control their attitudes.

They can blame white people for bringing them over here on boats and therefore setting the economic conditions that persist in the form of this underclass, but only a tiny percentage of American whites ever bought or transported or owned slaves. Whites did not enslave blacks in Africa, nor were they the first to purchase black slaves, nor is it likely, given the state of the globe in pre-industrial times, that had Western countries begun abolishing slavery 400 years earlier than they did, that this would have severely decimated the markets.

My ancestors were most likely serfs (like slaves, only binded to the land) and probably were until the 19th century. I guess it’s the fault of our manor lords that we are not fabulously rich today! Whatever. What’s done is done.

Now how about the here and the now? Here and now, in the U.S., the face of crime is largely black and Hispanic. We should assume that the blacks and Hispanics who engage in criminal activities do so of their own choosing every bit as much as their white counterparts do. To suggest otherwise would be racist and insulting.

Yes, part of the problem is the War on Drugs. But even apart from that futile struggle, the fact remains that most of the victims of black crime are themselves black, most of the victims of Hispanic crime are themselves Hispanic.

The many blacks and Hispanics who are not criminals cannot control the behavior of those criminals who happen to share their phenotype and/or ethnolinguistic heritage, but they certainly have this choice: will they stand up against black and Hispanic criminals and push to “clean up” their own à la Bill Cosby? Or will they whine about white racism while more and more blacks and Hispanics fall victim to crime?

If a conservative calling for strict “color-blind” racial policy is pushing inaction, at least he is not pretending otherwise.

“Why should we have immigration that is so great that it noticeably changes the racial makeup of America? We are a mature country with no land left to settle. Why should large-scale immigration of any people continue?”

Annek says it all. First, it is doubtful that Indian immigrants are higher IQ than Euro-Americans. Maybe back in 1970, but not now. India has a lower average IQ than Europe.

Second, even conceding an IQ advantage to Northeast Asians, it doesn’t appear that they have, so far, really ‘kicked the can’ further as far as technology (or much anything else) goes. Old stock Anglo-Americans, for example, invented the telegraph, telephone (okay, Anglo-Canadians), airplane, binary encoding of data, the assembly line, modern rocketry, the transistor, the integrated circuit, the assembly line, the combine, Unix, the PC, the operating systems for PCs, the GUI, etc etc…

As a light aside, in a boxing discussion someone mentioned that John Ruiz was the first Hispanic heavyweight champion. I countered, no, Daniel Mendoza probably should be considered as the first. The response by the Hispanic posters was that Mendoza may have had Spanish ancestry, but as he was Jewish, he didn’t count!

Hispanic, as some commentors say, is a cultural, and not a racial one. Sephardic Communities have traditionally kept close ties, keeping their languages (ladino and portuguese equivalent) and ceremonial different from other communities. Spinoza (or Espinosa) was an example, AFAIK he wrote to his family not in dutch but in portuguese. Thus, many communities in the Magreb, Turkey, Israel and other countries are hispanic in that sense: they keep their tradition alive.

About judge Cardozo, a true genelagoy of his family would give the origin of his lineages. Cardoso is also common in Spain, and after the expulsion many Jews went to Portugal (as well as to Italy, Netherlands, Magreb and Turkish Empire lands). One of the most famous is the aforementioned Spinoza, and another was Benjamin Disraeli (D’Israel, from Israel).

This documentary is quite insightful, and shows some of the efforts both by Jews worlwide, and Israel Spain governments to keep alive the customs, songs and traditions of the Ladinos

“including the freedom to conduct scientific research on race and IQ.”

Well, did anyone stopped him from writing whatever he wrote? Did anyone ever stopped someone from publishing this stuff?

With liberty you have the right to say whatever you want or do research on whatever you want. It also means people have their right to say whatever they want on what you wrote. Is it so hard to understand Mr. Hadar

“As to your statement that WASP’s made “mestizo” a racial classification – where do you get these ideas? The Spanish conquerors of Latin America made it a racial term, for use in their caste system (“casta””

No, mestizo is not a racial term. What happened is that the Portuguese and the Spanish that arrived in Latin America were small numbers of males, that would set operations to export gold or to produce sugar. They would have relations with the Native Indians and with their slaves, basically because they were the only women available.

Soon, a large portion of the population would be miscegenated descendants of Europeans, Africans and Native Indians. And in Latin America the influence of Native Indians is even bigger than in the US(Daily beverages, like guarana and matte, come from there). Most of the Mexican traditions come from the Native Indians. *The idea of the mestizo is mostly a reflection of the reality*( There was words like cafuzo – the descendants of Africans and Indians and mamelucos, the descendants of Europeans and Indians).

Just to have an idea, the Integralism, the most known *Fascist* movement in Brazil used to praise miscegenation, with bigger fervor than any Liberal in the US. By the way, many Black Americans are offended when they go to Latin America, because they see lots of people that they THINK that are Black, but that consider themselves White or Mulatto.

Andre, I don’t understand your point. You mention that Cafuzos are African-Indian mixes, and Mamelucos European-Indian ones. I presume that Mulattos, Quadroons, and Octoroons are still half-African, a quarter-African, and an eighth-African, respectively. These are all racial terms. So, if Mestizo is not part Indian and part European, what is it?

I just looked up “Hispanic” and it seems to have derived from the Roman Empire’s word for the entire Iberian peninsula, “Hispania”. The last word was where “Espana”, the Spanish word for “Spain”, was derived. (Apologies for not putting the “tilde” over the “n” in the word, I don’t know how to do that.) So it seems that those of Portuguese descent are Hispanic after all, at least according to many definitions. No comment on Stephen Gould’s story that, according to Hispanic posters, one has to be Gentile to count.

De Sousa is correct to insinuate that the social significance of such terms as “white,” “black,” “Amerindian,” “mulatto” and “mestizo” is not defined by biological ancestry alone, and this is especially true in a region such as Latin America where socially people tend to be seen on a “color spectrum” as opposed to the “one-drop rule” predominant in Anglo-America. Actually, the color spectrum has always been the norm in plantation societies: in the antebellum South, Barack Obama would have been considered mulatto, not black. It was only with the assimilation of the South into a broader Americana that certain distinctive notions began to fade.

It is however wrong to underestimate the biological and phenotypical significance of the aforementioned terms. On average, a “white”-identifying person in Brazil will have a higher proportion of European ancestry and a more obviously European phenotype than a “mulatto”-identifying person, and far more than a “black”-identifying person. The anecdotal outlier – the “white” individual who could pass for African-American in the DC area – is not and should not be considered the norm. Idem with respect to the white-mestizo-Indian spectrum.